The Church: Great and Small

Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Luke 18: 16-17

While on vacation with family in Washington, D.C. I had a chance to tour the National Cathedral.  We squeezed it in at the end of a whirlwind tour of war memorials, monuments, and museums.  I expected some resistance from my husband and children, but I insisted on stopping to see it.  I’ve seen cathedrals in various American cities and in Europe, but now the grandeur had a personal connection.  Within the ornate stained glass, the arches, the sculptures, and the beauty that called to mind the immensity and power of God, I saw echoes of my home church in the structure, the colors, and the artwork.  Within the large and grandiose, I found the small and personal.  I thought my husband and daughters were just humoring me, until we found some of the small chapels on the side.

In those spaces, private, intimate enclosures within the monumental and majestic cathedral, my children lit up with smiles.  My cousin’s five year old daughter, Jillian (an Episcopalian from before her birth) led my girls up to kneel at the altars.  The three little blond girls knelt in the chapel and whispered quietly to each other.  They may not have known how to respond to the vaulted arches and the ornate stained glass, but they knew how to kneel and pray.  Tears grew in my eyes, as I saw my children react to the beauty of the place, as it brought the transcendent into the personal.  

In our lives, especially our lives in relation to God, we need the transcendent and the immanent, the immense and the tiny, the grandiose and the mundane, the global and the personal, the catholic and the local.  The Episcopal Church and St. Ignatius are an excellent example.

Recently, I have followed a few events at the National Convention through Facebook and blogs, and contacted members of the Diocese of Chicago for help with some projects.  I am impressed by the structure of the larger church, especially as delegates at the convention reportedly worked together with respect and collaboration to decide polarizing issues.  I am proud to be an Episcopalian when I read about the far-reaching efforts for social justice from our larger church.  I am grateful for the help from Diocesan staff on publicizing events and organizing important educational opportunities.  The larger church does a great deal of good, but it is easy for me to get lost in the mass of it and frustrated at the unwieldy structure. That is why I need my little chapel here at St. Ignatius.

My home parish, St. Ignatius, brings the transcendent into the personal for me.  Here, we put the ideals of social justice to work in our resale shop, in our work at the food pantry, in our support of the counseling center and the parish nurse.  For the last 100 years, people at St. Ignatius have had our boots on the ground, bringing to bear important events like helping Eagle Scouts build sheds, Vacation Bible School organizing fundraisers, craft fairs, and educating ourselves and our community.  Here we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves, in an everyday, personal, intimate way.  Here we put the grandiose ideas into mundane action.  I am like my children in the National Cathedral, a little bit lost in the big picture, but comfortable in the personal, kneeling down at the little altar to receive God’s grace.

Spooking me towards God

John Caputo writes that God is what spooks us.  In his excellent essay, "Proclaiming the year of the jubilee: Thoughts on a spectral life", he tells us, "God is what makes us say, “something spooky is going on here, which is both a promise and a threat… something thought-worthy, something spooky, something oddly, eerily there.” (Schendzielos 19) Whatever God is, God is the thing that haunts us, the thing that insists, the thing from which we cannot wholly rest.  Caputo proposes not an ontology, but a “hauntology”.   He proposes that God insists, spooks, haunts us into a relationship with God.

The idea of God haunting me is compelling.  It is too vivid to ignore, and too true to my visceral, physical reactions to the God-moments in my life.  God knocks me down, quickens my heart-beat, catches my breath.  God is the bump in the night and the shadow in the corner, the dark that illuminates my fear, and spooks me into action.  To spook can mean “1.  to frighten, unnerve, 2.  to take fright suddenly”  (Oxford Dictionary).  To take fright suddenly, as in a horse spooking.

The spook of a horse is familiar to me.  During the years when I made my living training horses, I sat many a spook.  Horses spook at all manner of things, plastic bags, umbrellas, loud noises, fast vehicles, shadows and tricks of the light.   A horse’s spook can disrupt a trail ride, ruin a competition round, and injure horse and rider.  But spooks have a purpose, and talented trainers use them.  A horse spooks to save its life, the same way we flinch at objects coming towards our face or jump at a sharp sound when walking down a deserted street.  The horse responds to its environment instinctively, the way a human being responds to God.

A good rider can manage a horse’s spooks during training and competition.  With correct position, feel, and confidence, she can maintain the horse’s attention through most distractions.  When faced with something unexpected, she can compel the horse to continue through his program, only rolling an eye and flicking an ear at the terrorizing McDonald’s bag or golf umbrella.  An effective horseman can insist that a horse ignore his spooks, just as most people ignore the spooks of God in everyday life.  We maintain our focus on the prize at hand, the job we need to accomplish, the schedule, the to-do list, the agenda.  We bury the butterflies of recognition deep down and persist on our path.  God spooks us, but the world has us well-trained to resist the temptation to respond.

An excellent trainer, however, will use a horse’s spooks for his benefit.  As the momentary flight reflex takes over, the horse takes in breath, coils his loins, and prepares to spin and run.  The life comes up in that 1200 pound animal, making him light as a feather and quick as the wind, as he whirls away from the danger.  An excellent trainer rides the spook, helps him get away, fans the life inside into a flame of brilliance.  Rather than shut down the reflex, an excellent trainer receives it, enhances it, and shapes it into a transcendent moment between horse and man.  

God spooks us for a reason, and we have a choice to respond or to ignore it. The "God-moments" in my life, the spooks, happened at various times, all out of the blue, all causing change. Perhaps I was in the throes of a crisis, paralyzed, utterly unclear which path to take, when the decision came and the words rose, unbidden, from my lips, as I made my choice. Perhaps I was wrought with anxiety, sobbing on the bathroom floor, unable to move forward, when something like a nudge lifted my head, when something like a hug enveloped my heart, and I found the strength to rise. Perhaps I was sitting on my couch reading, alone, at night, when the words on the page unexpectedly struck open the raw place in my heart. In those moments, I stopped trying to understand and I let my emotions react. I let God spook me from my path, change my perspective, and open my heart. I opened up my heart to my own failings and to God's immense love of me, in spite of all of them. Sitting alone, sobbing, I didn't analyze or intellectualize; I just felt the immense presence of God.  I just felt reality.  

Many things might have spooked me, my own fear, my own desperation, my own latent passions hidden within me.  I do not know for sure that it was God that lighted up my fear in order to change my mindset.  I do not know for sure, but I choose to believe that, perhaps, it was God.   I believe, perhaps, God is what sparked the spook, what ignited my deep-seated, but long ignored, desire for something deeper, my longing for a connection with the world, for a relationship with the eternal.  Perhaps God spooks us to jar us out of our daily existence, to fan the light of life within us, to quicken the pulse, to lighten the feet, to shorten the breath.  Perhaps God uses our spooks to shape us.  In the moments I’ve been spooked by the mystery hard enough to take notice, my defenses fail, my heart opens, and my perception clears.  In the breathless moment, I see with clarity and I respond.  As my heart-rate settles, I am not quite the same as before the spook.  I am just a little bit more alive, a little bit more transcendent.  

One of my good friends, a psychologist, told me that fear is the great motivator; we only make positive changes in our lives when we are too afraid NOT to make the change.  When God spooks me, I want to feel the fear, I want to let it change my path.  I want my flight reflex to kick in and lead me closer to the eternal.  Perhaps God is begging us, haunting us, spooking us into noticing him.  And, perhaps, when we allow ourselves to be spooked, perhaps, we find the God we didn’t know we were seeking.

Schendizielos, E.N. (Ed.). (2015).  It Spooks:  Living in Response to an unheard call.  Rapid City, SD:  Shelter50.